UK short 100K tech recruits this year

Quango quacks say IT growth to outpace national average

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Demand for technology recruits is set to grow five times faster than the national average over the next 10 years.

There are now 1.5m people in the UK working in technology – about one in 20 UK workers, according to e-skills. About 40 per cent of these people work directly for technology companies, the rest in IT departments within other firms.

E-skills predicts employment in IT and telecoms will grow by 2.19 per cent a year – creating demand for an extra half a million trained people over the next five years. The technology workforce will need another 110,000 people this year alone – about half of these are expected to be people moving from other jobs into tech, and 17 per cent will come straight from college or university.

Numbers from e-skills also show the typical tech worker is old and male. The proportion of IT workers aged under 30 has fallen from 33 per cent to 19 per cent – which the quango reckons is down to recruiting staff from other areas of employment, rather than hiring college leavers. The number of tech workers aged over 50 has doubled to 17 per cent. Meanwhile women make up just 18 per cent of the typical IT department.

The telecoms and IT industry is worth £81bn to the UK economy, nine per cent of gross value added.